ham

[David Wilson]

You will notice that my posts sometimes often include "ham" among the 
recipients.  This will result in a bounce if you "reply all" to my posts, 
and several people have commented on this.

By way of explanation:

I am currently using MicroSuck Outlook Express, the free but rather hobbled 
version of Outlook that came on my PC.

About a year ago, my spam ratio finally exceeded my patience ratio.  Since 
Outlook Express does not provide an effective spam filter, I decided to try 
Spambayes, of which I had heard good things (which were true).

Most mail programs provide API hooks allowing Spambayes filtering to be 
integrated into the program.  Not so Outlook Express.  When using Spambayes 
with Outlook Express, Spambayes must be inserted upstream of Outlook 
Express, where it marks incoming mail so that Outlook Express can classify 
it using its (lame) native mail filters.  From a small number of unsavory 
choices, Spambayes chose to include "ham", "spam" or "unsure" in the "To:" 
line, so that Outlook Express could identify and route spam by detecting 
"spam" in the "To:" line.  I am guessing that this Spambayes feature was 
included solely to deal with Outlook Express.

Unfortunately, because good incoming mail has "ham" in the "To:" line, "ham" 
is replicated to the "To:" line of reply-alls to that mail.  If I fail to 
remove "ham" from the recipients, it makes its way into the mailing list and 
subsequent "reply-alls".  Since "ham" is not a valid recipient, bounces 
occur.

I don't know if Seqfan and Math-Fun could filter "ham" out of the "To:" line 
of incoming mail, this would solve the mailing list problem.  A more general 
solution would be for Spambayes to allow me to put "spam" in the "To:" line 
of spam, but leave the "To:" line of ham alone; this is consistent with my 
own personal mail filtering.

- David W. Wilson

"Truth is just truth -- You can't have opinions about the truth."
   - Peter Schickele, from P.D.Q. Bach's oratorio "The Seasonings"